Divine Law by sugar0o who lurks

Envy

Chapter 2: Indivia

Not knowing how much longer he could take it, Inuyasha paced into the night. Many times in his life since he had once been freed from the God’s Tree, Goshinboku, he had thought about how he had spent his life, and how he would spend it in the future. Long ago as a little boy not taller then his mother’s thin waist he had wanted nothing more then to be ‘normal,’ human, anything but a half breed. Because he had lived with her then and there, she refused to give him up to the ever cruel Sesshomaru. He had been surrounded by humans who thought of him as dirt, and trash. When his mother died, he wasn’t even able to stay by her side to see when and how they had buried her or if they had at all. To this day he didn’t even know where she was placed, but he had put a stone some place pretty that he’d thought she’d like.

Growing up life was not at all fun, or pleasant, and by the time he looked eight he both refused to go to Sesshomaru at a younger age, and did not know how to ask for forgiveness even if he wanted to. He had longed for a ‘normal life’ though even if it was by his hated brother‘s side, so many times he had passed a village by watching from the trees and a distance away, never knowing what it could be like to just have a little fun. His life, even though he was a prince of his mother’s land, was hard, he wished so many times that it could be easy, that he could be one or the other - demon or human, but not both as he had been born.

He wished he could be as light hearted as other his age, but this was not to be, and he was hanyou, it was his curse to bare the love and folly of his parents. He knew it would be easier if they were alive still but it could not be helped. His father died moments after his birth, his mother of old age. Silently he damned them for even daring to breed and make him.

His human nights made him wary, all over one thousand plus of them. For all the times he had thought to be human, craved it, he hated how weak he felt on the one night in a month when he did not have even a percentage of his father’s great and terrible blood helping him. It lay dormant and asleep as all half demon’s demonic blood had to at least once a month. It was a trade, gain more power then a human, being half, yet you understand so little about being a human because you were an outcast that the one night your forced to be human, you’ll probably die.

He hated being a human.

As he grew older and more taunted, he longed for his father’s blood to be more alive, never cared when it took over, when he woke covered in blood, and bodies laying around. He was young but just entering adolescence, and still as much as he had once wanted to be just like the humans. He hated them now, saw them for bugs under his feet. In passing, he had come across Sesshomaru, the brother that he had not seen in a hundred years. How cold, and beautiful, deadly and perfect he was, from his crests to his royal status. Inuyasha remembered his mother telling him about the old man and how he looked and having never seen the male that sired him, he could only think with his young mind that Sesshomaru had to look more like their father.

Dressed in a fine white kimono, like pure fresh fallen snow, hair so bright that it looked silver in the light instead of the dull white his own hair looked like. Even the crests, that he did not sport, in his mind he thought Sesshomaru dressed in his full regalia had to look just like their father. And he hated him for it. Inuyasha never knew, still didn’t and probably wouldn’t that Sesshomaru had looked upon his face that day impassive as always uncaring to the world and had remarked to himself that the half-breed looked just like their father, rugged, and wild, but so much younger. He resented that more then anything else, unknowingly setting the boy up with his uncaring shower of power, that the bastard pup was worthless to him.

Inuyasha wanted to prove him wrong, he wanted power. Needed it, craved it. He wanted to prove himself, he wanted once more to be what he was not, but now he wanted to be demon.

For many years later the two saw each other, who started the first blow neither would probably ever know, though both might agree that it was probably Inuyasha. One started it out of his envy for what the other stood for, had, could be, had lived. Sesshomaru had gotten to know their father, while he had not. But at the same time the older battled because father had died for the half-breed he had not even met, refusing to live for him, had given the bastard his looks so much that as he grew he only looked more like the once Western yama inu. The brat even began to sound like him when he hit the age where his adolescence was beginning its final growth into young adulthood and his voice changed.

Sesshomaru hated him for it.

Then they parted ways, avoided each other, too sick and tired of seeing the other’s face after claiming that their lives belonged to the other to take. While one went home to sulk, the other searched out power, but found a miko with a jewel. He was eventually pinned to a tree, and while he slept the world moved on. Never would he know that his brother had actually come to look for him, wanting to offer an olive branch so to speak, a way to get back into the western lands good graces. Sadly he slept through the invasion and war, and set his brother on a path that would one day lead him to seeking out their father’s great fangs. They would find it, and it would be there that the taiyoukai would first see the greater prize, the miko, Kagome.

Inuyasha reflected on all of this. Looking back at his life, his travels his journey. He didn’t know when he had really started to push Kagome away so much, how badly he had hurt her by seeing another in her when Kikyo was long gone, and would never come back. A part of him knew this, but in looking back at his life, he knew, deep down that Kikyo was the first one that seemed to share his burdens, she envied life just as he had, and the curse was that another had envied them for their love.

He wondered how life would be different if he had known about Onigumo, or if he had killed the man before he’d become Naraku, and ruined so many lives. He wondered if Naraku had never existed what would have become of Kikyo and himself. And what about Kagome? He knew he couldn’t live with out Kagome. Proof of this fact had been the last few months, how he had not been able to function, how life was duller, boring, tiresome. He missed the days filled with her annoying conversation, and the fights they had, he wanted it back, but she wasn’t there any more. And even more then that, when he’d smelt her happy scent on the wind he knew he shouldn’t move to take her back, it was his indecision that had placed her in his brothers hands and he once again envied something his brother had.

This left him at a cross roads of sorts.

He had made the decision in the last moon that he would not seek her out because for the first time in so very long she was honestly happy. And while he knew that if you really loved someone you would and should let them go, Kagome had taught him that - he was finding it harder to live with that fact then he had thought. He wondered not for the first time since the smiling girl with bright eyes had freed him, how she could be so forgiving and so unselfish when all he wanted to do was track her down and rip her from his brother. Bring her back even if it cost her, her happiness.

His solar lamped eyes slid close as he tried to right his thinking.

He didn’t want to hurt Kagome, didn’t want to take her away from her happiness, even if letting her stay happy hurt him in the process. But He did not like it at all and the problem was, he didn’t want her to be Sesshomaru’s happiness either. Admittedly, he was a selfish being and not as pure hearted as she, and if he couldn’t have her, he felt no one should. He envied his brother because he knew no matter what he was one of the only persons that could keep her. Even if Inuyasha made it his goal to get her back, he knew Sesshomaru had never played with a full hand when it came to him, and that it was only luck that was on his side the few times he had gotten far enough to hurt his alpha.

He envied that too.

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Envy - may be defined as an emotion that "occurs when a person lacks another's (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it."

Envy can also derive from a sense of low self-esteem that results from an upward social comparison threatening a person's self image: another person has something that the envier considers to be important to have. If the other person is perceived to be similar to the envier, the aroused envy will be particularly intense, because it signals to the envier that it just as well could have been he or she who had the desired object.

AS PER WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy

Word Count ~ 1600

EndAN: i realize there is little SK in this oneshot BUT, i decided that i'm going to try to link them together to make a full short story. Also this was not beta'd sorry :p but I hope you liked this. - r0o